Detainee statements reveal prison savagery

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Fresh details of violence and degradation by US prison guards have come to light. Scott Higham and Joe Stephens report from Washington.

Previously secret sworn statements by detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq describe in raw detail abuse that goes well beyond what has been made public, adding allegations of prisoners being ridden like animals, sexually fondled by female soldiers and forced to retrieve their food from toilets.

The statements - which provide the most detailed picture yet of what took place in the jail - were taken from 13 detainees soon after a soldier reported the incidents to military investigators in mid- January.

The detainees said they were savagely beaten and repeatedly humiliated sexually by US soldiers working on the night shift at Tier 1A in Abu Ghraib during the holy month of Ramadan, according to copies of the statements obtained by The Washington Post.

Some of the detainees described being abused as punishment or discipline after they were caught fighting or with a prohibited item. Some said they were pressed to denounce Islam or were force-fed pork and liquor. "They said we will make you wish to die and it will not happen," said Ameen Saeed al-Sheik, detainee No. 151362.

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The sworn statements were taken in Baghdad between January 16 and 21.

Kasim Mehaddi Hilas, detainee No. 151108, told investigators that when he arrived at Abu Ghraib last year, he was forced to strip, put on a hood and wear rose-coloured panties with flowers on them.

Mr Hilas also said he witnessed an army translator having sex with a youth at the prison. He said the youth was between 15 and 18 years old. Someone hung sheets to block the view, but Mr Hilas said he heard screams and climbed a door to get a better look. "The kid was hurting very bad."

Another detainee told military investigators that US soldiers sodomised and beat him. The detainee, whose name is being withheld by the Post because he is an alleged victim of a sexual assault, said he was kept naked for five days when he arrived at Abu Ghraib and was forced to kneel for four hours wearing a hood. He said he was beaten so badly one day that the hood flew off his head.

One day, the detainee said, US soldiers held him down and spread his legs as another soldier prepared to pull down his zipper. "I started screaming," he said. A soldier stepped on his head, he said, and someone broke a phosphoric light and spilled the chemicals on him. "I was glowing and they were laughing," he said.

The detainee said the soldiers eventually brought him to a room and sodomised him with a stick. "They were taking pictures of me during all these instances," he told investigators.

Mr Hilas and another detainee said they saw Specialist Charles Graner - identified by a number of detainees as having abused them - and others sodomise a detainee with a phosphoric light.

Hussein Mohssein Mata al-Zayiadi, detainee No. 19446, said soldiers forced him and others to crawl on their hands and knees and were sometimes ridden by them like animals.

Mr al-Zayiadi also described what has become one of the iconic photographs in the prison abuse scandal. "They brought my friends, Haidar, Ahmed, Nouri, Ahzem, Hashiem, Mustafa, and I, and they put us two on the bottom, two on top of them, and two on top of those and one on top," he said. "They took pictures of us and we were naked."

Another publicised photograph - that of a hooded detainee hooked up to wires and standing on a box - is also described in the statements.

"On the third day, after 5 o'clock, Mr Graner came and took me to room Number 37, which is the shower room, and he started punishing me," said Abdou Hussain Saad Faleh, detainee No. 18170. "Then he brought a box of food and he made me stand on it with no clothing, except a blanket. Then a tall black soldier came and put electrical wires on my fingers and toes and on my penis, and I had a bag over my head."

While military investigators interviewed the detainees separately, many of them recalled the same event or pattern of events and procedures in Tier 1A - a block reserved for prisoners who were thought to possess intelligence that could help thwart the insurgency in Iraq, find Saddam Hussein or locate weapons of mass destruction.

Military intelligence officers took over the cell block last October and were using military police to help "set the conditions" for interrogations, said an investigative report compiled by Major General Antonio Taguba.

Several MPs have since said in statements and through their lawyers that they were roughing up detainees at the direction of US military intelligence officers.

While detainees said they could not identify some of the soldiers because they either covered their name patches or did not wear uniforms, eight of the prisoners identified Specialist Graner, a member of the 372nd Military Police Company, who is at the centre of the abuse investigation. Detainees also named Sergeant Javal Davis. Both face courts-martial.

Five other military police have been charged, including Jeremy Sivits, who pleaded guilty on Wednesday to abusing prisoners and was sentenced to a year in jail and discharged from the army.